Tom Morrison returns with his quarterly review of the world of information law
Christmas 2013 may have become a distant memory, but any work-related party of note will have left its indelible mark somewhere on a social network. Party-goers up and down the land will have made sure that those special moments from their work dos were captured in prose on Twitter, through grainy fake Polaroids on Instagram or with amusing clips posted on YouTube. There can be few workplaces where an employee has not done something like tweeting a picture of a photocopied body part with the hashtag #mybossisanidiot or posted a video of themselves drinking vodka via their eye sockets.
The anecdote becomes somewhat less amusing for the employee if, once the alcohol-induced haze has cleared, his or her employer decides that the employee may have brought the business into disrepute because the company’s social media account was used, or the star of the video was in company uniform at the time. There is an employment law minefield to navigate, not only in relation to how that employee is dealt with, but also in terms
